"The New Republic has abandoned its liberal but heterodox tradition and embraced a leftist outlook as predictable as that of Mother Jones or the Nation."

Writes Martin Peretz in the Wall Street Journal. Peretz was editor in chief of The New Republic from 1974 until 2011.

The magazine now seems to live in a space where those "little insurrections of the mind" are unwelcome. It is akin to the atmosphere in many colleges and universities: There are prevailing orthodoxies but they aren't recognized as such. Mr. Obama himself is the main one. The president is an object of fealty at the New Republic in a way that Woodrow Wilson and even Franklin Roosevelt never were.

"Obama’s Middle East Is in Tatters, Utter Tatters."

"It is not actually his region. Still, with the arrogance that is so characteristic of his behavior in matters he knows little about (which is a lot of matters), he entered the region as if in a triumphal march...."

It's Martin Peretz, railing against our battered President.

"So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse."

Marty Peretz, The New Republic's owner, opines about Muslims.

Marty Peretz on the President's narcissism.

"What I suspect is that the president is probably a clinical narcissist. This is not necessarily a bad condition if one maintains for oneself what the psychiatrists call an 'optimal margin of illusion,' that is, the margin of hope that allows you to work. But what if his narcissism blinds him to the issues and problems in the world and the inveterate foes of the nation that are not susceptible to his charms?"

Poor Obama! All his life people projected their hopes onto him and he learned how to step up and be a bright clear screen for these projections. What looks like narcissism is, perhaps, the realism that develops when you are immersed in an environment that is so persistently and consistently distorted to give you the feedback that you are magnificently and magically effective through your sheer presence.

The man who voted present and became President is tragically — touchingly — flawed.

ADDED (after an emailed suggestion): We're Always Touched by Your Presence, Dear President.

Mickey Kaus leaks a JournoList thread.

We've discussed JournoList here before. (Remember? It seemed to trigger Ezra Klein's bizarre tweet that there were "a lot" of anti-Semitic commenters on my blog.) There are 300 journalists hanging out with each other on the list. Is that a bad thing? Are they coordinating their stories, losing their independence and sharp edge? Well, they aren't so coordinated that they can all keep the list secret, and here's what Mickey got hold of. They seem pretty tedious and unattractive. I don't mind if they keep it private, very private. That said, if there's anything on the JournoList about me — some scurrilous charge of anti-Semitism, perhaps — please pass it on.

ADDED: "The JournoList Sure Has A Lot Of Anti-Semitic Commenters."

"That was how I felt, and that she had draped herself in unflattering prudery, unflattering and almost pre-modern."

Marty Peretz reminisces about how he felt on watching Anita Hill testify, back in 1991. It's his strategy for writing about the Clarence Thomas memoir without reading it. And he's got a backup anecdote to flesh out his musings about the aura around the unread book:

A large Cambridge dinner party a few years ago comes to mind. I won't say at whose house. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't seated next to Al Sharpton, an interloper. (Sharpton had arrived with someone else but uninvited. The hostess was furious.) I was seated next to Anita Hill, an attractive woman and an interesting woman. We spoke about how the loss of the King James version in our culture had degraded the writing and speaking of the English language. Then, as if our conversation lacked something, she raised the name of Clarence Thomas. Sad, no?